SMYTH, Sir Walter (1588-1648), of Great Bedwyn, Wilts.

Sir Walter Smyth was born in London on 20 April 1588, and baptised at the parish of St Peter Cornhill a week later. His father, Humphrey Smyth, was originally from Devon, and probably first arrived in London on his entry to the Inner Temple in 1556; but by the time of his son’s birth, Humphrey was established in the City as a master of the bench at the Inner Temple, a judge of the sheriff’s court and a justice of the peace. His death in September 1589 left the infant Walter heir to lands in London, Middlesex and Surrey.12PROB11/74/240. Smyth was still a minor when his mother died in 1597, leaving his upbringing and education in the hands of her kinsman, Sir William Stonehouse of Radley, Berkshire.13PROB11/90/262. It was under the auspices of the Stonehouse family that Smyth received a legal training at the Middle Temple, and a knighthood at Theobalds in April 1616. Around 1613, Smyth had entered into an indenture with Sir Francis Dowse of Hampshire, and his brother Gabriel Dowse of Berkshire, by which Smyth conveyed two of his properties, Send Court (Surrey) and Islington Rectory (Middlesex), to them in trust.14PROB11/204/388. The latter property included 45 acres of land as well as all tithes and offerings and the advowson.15VCH Mdx. viii. 88. The indenture was probably in respect of a marriage settlement between Smyth and a member of the Dowse family, although the identity of Smyth’s wife is not known. The Dowse family had connections with Wiltshire, and it appears that Smyth moved to Great Bedwyn around this time.16Keeler, Long Parliament, 343-4.

Smyth made Great Bedwyn his permanent home, but his income was derived from his London properties and he had no substantial holdings in Wiltshire. He had been resident in Great Bedwyn for some 23 years before he was added to the bench in 1636, but his name appears on no other local commissions before 1641. Smyth seems to have owed his success at the polls in the Long Parliament election to the patronage of the Seymour family, headed by the 2nd earl (and later marquess) of Hertford. His ties with the family are attested to in the inquisition post mortem (Sept. 1626) of the 1st earl of Hertford, in which Smyth appears among those who had sworn on oath as to the late earl’s holdings.17Wilts. IPM, Charles I (Index Lib. xxiii), 20. During the 1630s, Smyth joined Sir Francis Seymour*, Great Bedwyn’s patron, in opposition to royal interference in the county. It is not known if he refused to pay Ship Money, but in May 1637 Smyth and his fellow magistrates were chastised by the privy council for their refusal to comply with an order to provide timber for the navy.18CSP Dom., 1637, pp. 137-8. In 1639 Smyth also declined to contribute financially to the campaign against the Scots.19Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 915.

Smyth’s parliamentary career was brief and uneventful. He received no committee appointments, and his presence at Westminster was recorded only once, when he joined the main body of the House to take the Protestation on 3 May 1641.20CJ ii. 133a. Smyth ultimately followed the Seymours into the royalist camp. It is not clear when he withdrew from Westminster, but it is likely that he departed before the outbreak of hostilities in the summer of 1642. His absence was not formally noticed until 20 September 1643, when the Commons ordered that Smyth and others come before it to explain their withdrawal on pain of sequestration. In the winter of 1643-4, Smyth joined the Oxford Parliament, and his name appeared as a signatory to the letter from that body to the 3rd earl of Essex in January 1644.21Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. On 5 February 1644 he was formally disabled from sitting at Westminster.22CJ iii. 256b, 389b. Smyth later alleged that age and infirmity had caused his hasty retreat from London, and that he had been forced to attend at Oxford by royalist soldiers quartered at his house in Great Bedwyn. He also claimed that he had returned to Wiltshire before the Oxford MPs had declared their Westminster counterparts to be traitors. Smyth had certainly returned to Wiltshire by July 1644, as in the same month he surrendered to the earl of Essex on his march towards the south west. Smyth was perhaps persuaded to submit, rather than flee, because Essex was the brother in law of the marquess of Hertford. Whatever his motives, his ready submission made him suspect in the eyes of many Wiltshire royalists.23CCC 948-9; SP23/174, ff. 637, 640.

Smyth faced the financial burden of the civil war on two counts. As a property holder in London he was assessed by the Committee for Advance of Money, which in July 1644 levied a fine of £2,000 on houses in St Sepulchre’s and St Dunstan’s parishes, and Old Street, London. He was threatened in turn with imprisonment and sequestration for non-payment, but on 2 April 1647 the fine was dramatically reduced to £110, of which he had paid £50 by 21 April following.24CCAM 433. Doubtless his inability to pay can be attributed to the additional burden of composition. An order was issued by the House for Smyth to appear before the Committee for Compounding on 18 October 1645 and he petitioned to compound on 29 November.25CJ iv. 313b; SP23/174, f. 640. Smyth took the Solemn League and Covenant in December, administered on behalf of the Wiltshire county committee by Henry Hungerford*, and certificates were issued by the committee and the earl of Essex, confirming that Smyth’s only offence had been his brief attendance at Oxford, and that otherwise he was too ill to leave his home.26SP23/174, ff. 643, 645, 667.

As a former member of the Oxford Parliament, Smyth’s composition fine was reckoned at £1,600, calculated at the higher rate of one third of two years’ value of his estate, though the committee also reported a fine of £750 if calculated at the lower rate of one tenth.27SP23/174 ff. 637, 641. In October 1646 the figure was adjusted to £1,085 – or £685 on the condition that he settled £40 per annum on the rectory at Islington.28SP23/174, f. 637. He chose the latter option, and conveyed the rectory by indenture to its parishioners, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* among them, as feoffees in trust.29Lewis, Hist. of the Parish of St Mary, Islington, 104. Smyth’s sequestration was discharged on 15 November 1647, but a re-sequestration order was issued on 23 June 1648 - two months after his death - for his refusal to complete his composition, and his bond was not delivered up to his executor until 24 August 1648.30SP23/228, ff. 186-8. Smyth died in Wiltshire and was buried according to his wishes at the parish church at Great Bedwyn on 28 April 1648. His brief will, drafted in January 1644, asked God’s protection ‘from the dangers and perils that now hang over us’. It also revoked an earlier trust agreement with two of his wife’s relatives and made his kinsman, Duke Stonehouse†, the nephew of Sir William Stonehouse, his sole heir and executor.31PROB11/204/388.